The government has released new figures today (Thursday 22 October)
revealing how much money local councils in England spent on
temporary accommodation for homeless households in 2019/20. They
show: Councils spent almost £1.2 billion providing temporary
accommodation for homeless households between April 2019 and March
2020. This has increased by 9% in the last...Request free trial
The government
has released new figures today (Thursday 22
October) revealing how much money local councils
in
England spent on temporary accommodation
for homeless households in 2019/20. They show:
-
Councils
spent almost £1.2
billion
providing
temporary
accommodation for homeless households between
April
2019 and March
2020. This has increased
by 9% in the last
year
and
55% in the last
five
years.
-
Of
the total
spent on
temporary accommodation by councils in England last
year, 87% of it went to private
landlords, letting agents or companies.
-
The amount
of money being paid to these private accommodation
providers has increased by
66% in the last five years
from £621 million in
2014/15 to £1 billion
in
2019/20.
-
More than a
third (38%) of the
money paid
to private accommodation providers was spent on
emergency
B&Bs – £393 million
–
considered
some of
the least suitable
places for
families with children to live.
Polly Neate, chief
executive of Shelter, said:
“It is outrageous that
almost £1.2
billion a year is spent on
often
shoddy and
expensive temporary
accommodation
because of the
lack of social homes. It’s a false
economy for taxpayers’
money to
be used to pay private
landlords for grotty emergency
B&Bs,
which
can be
so terrible to
live in that families end up
deeply
traumatised.
“The decades of failure to build
social homes means too many people on lower
incomes are stuck in unstable private
rentals – increasing their chances of
becoming homeless. This cycle of destitution
persists
when
those
who lose their
homes turn to the council for
help, because councils have so little
social housing left, they can’t alleviate
their
homelessness
for
good. All they can do is pay over the
odds for insecure temporary
accommodation.
“If the government fails to
act on
this crisis, the economic chaos of the
pandemic is only going to make what is already an awful
situation worse, as even more people are forced
into homelessness. The government must
commit now to spending ‘smarter’
with
a rescue package
for social homes. By investing
£12
billion over the next two
years, we could build an extra
144,000 lower-cost
homes, including 50,000
desperately
needed
social
homes.”
-
The amount
spent on temporary accommodation (TA) by
councils in
England is
published
by the Ministry
of Housing,
Communities and Local Government
(MHCLG): Revenue
outturn
housing services, LA drop-down.
-
The
2019/20 annual spend data is
published here: Revenue
outturn housing services (R04). In 2019/20
councils in
England spent £1,186,130,000
on
TA.
-
The figures
relate to the period from April 2019 to March 2020
so mostly cover the
pre-pandemic period. This means that much of the additional
spending carried out
due to the
government’s ‘Everyone In’ initiative would
not be
included in the total
spend in
2019/20.
-
We
have calculated the amount
spent on TA
that
is managed or owned by
private landlords, letting agents or companies
by adding up the
following
spending
lines in the
R04
tables: private managed
accommodation leased by registered social
landlords
(RSLs),
private
managed accommodation leased by the
authority, directly with a
private sector landlord, bed &
breakfast
accommodation and other nightly paid,
privately managed accommodation. Spending on this type of
TA increased by
66% from £621,039,000
in
2014/15 to £1,033,429,000
in
2019/20.
-
We have
compared 2019/20 data with
2018/19 and
2014/15 data to
show the change
over the
last year and the last five years. The
2018/19 data is published
here:
Revenue outturn housing services (R04) and the
2014/15 data is
published here:
Revenue outturn housing services (R04)
-
The total
amount spent on TA includes Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP) funding through housing
benefit, as well as funding from
councils’ general budgets.
-
In 2019/20
councils spent £393,411,000
on B&Bs. As well as being
expensive, B&Bs are regarded as one of the least
suitable types of accommodation for families to live in.
This is because they involve having to share facilities
(bathrooms and kitchens) and often the whole family will
also have to sleep in one room. There is a six-week legal
limit on families being placed in B&Bs.
-
At the end
of March 2020 there were 93,000
households
living in temporary accommodation in England. This is
available here:
MHCLG, Live tables on homelessness, Statutory homelessness
live tables, Table TA1
-
The number
of households accommodated in temporary accommodation
cannot be directly compared with the TA spend data because
the number of households in TA is a snapshot figure whilst
the amount spent on TA is an annual figure.
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